Carie's Notes
Carie Note, Nov 25 2008
With the public meeting on Nov 13th at Empire High School, I have concluded my assessment
on behalf of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. In determining
whether to go forward with a NEPA*-bounded process, several questions were on my
mind:
- Given the high stakes about the outcome, would many people be willing to engage
in something that focused only on the analysis?
- Would this process leave people's legal rights intact?
- Did I believe the Forest Service would be responsive to the working group's advice?
The answers to these questions were yes, yes, and yes.
There was one more question:
Would this system tend to hold a stable space for collaborative dialog?
And to this, my answer, reluctantly, is "no." Therefore, I do not recommend that
this process go forward.
As a whole, many of you who oppose the mine believe that a stronger NEPA process
makes for a stronger fight against the mine. The problem lies, I think, in the myriad
smaller decisions that go into that whole: decisions about your own protocols, people
you wish to have as speakers, timing, and so forth. For these individual decisions,
there could be a divergence--your focus on making a better NEPA process pulls you
one way, and other tactical considerations can at times pull you another way or
at least dominate your attention. I don't feel I am creating a "stable space for
collaborative dialog" when we are essentially having two conversations at one time,
only one of which can be candidly surfaced.
In internal discussions with the Institute, they clearly would like to find another
alternative that would be destined for success. We are still carrying on that conversation.
Philip Murphy is continuing with the data assessment of the Scoping comments. We
still need to show whether database search technology could work to support a grass
roots content analysis approach, if not for this project then for others. Philip
and I will be meeting together in the next weeks to test his work. Results will
be posted at http://rosemontmine.ecr.gov
in late December of this year.
I thank you for your generosity of spirit in teaching me about this situation. You
have borne witness to my struggle to evaluate the original approach. Coming to a
"no" answer for this design was not easy, but I believe anything else would have
been a disservice to you.
My thanks, too, to the U.S. Institute. I have greatly appreciated the opportunity
to work with them and learn and grow from that interaction.
Respectfully-
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This page was last updated 1/13/2011.